Brooke’s Note: Roll-ups and aggregators have big cash, big-time boards of directors, real business plans (well, most), top executive leadership and palpable belief. They also offer the prospects of an IPO. But when you talk to advisors within these groups, two of the aspects of their roll-ups that they cite as being of even greater value are camaraderie and the ability to share information with other top firms. What John Furey is doing with the formation of this study group, aRIA, is to capture some of the better aspects of a roll-up — while maintaining the best aspects of staying independent i.e. control over your own destiny. An IPO sounds like easy riches but it can also make it potentially harder to listen to your own financial biorhythms. Furey, a former Schwab director was already known as a key player on the RIA stage to people inside the business. Now the 'secret’ may start to get out.

The group was conceived, and is managed, by John Furey, principal of Advisor Growth Strategies LLC. These firms will meet on a regular basis, sharing ideas and suggestions as well as their own war stories about bringing other advisors to their firms. But the idea is not to rely on firms that have their business model based on making acquisitions.

“We want to put out intellectual capital about how to create scale in this business,” Furey says. “People have always looked at a bank or a roll-up, and this group is saying: there are other ways to do it.”

“The RIA landscape is undergoing positive change unlike at any other point in our history. Investors are being educated about the vast array of benefits associated with being in the care of an RIA firm, and advisors should know their options for becoming part of such a firm as well.”

Different strokes

Brent Brodeski: Frankly, no one else in the Zero Alpha Group has chosen to grow beyond organically.

The new group, aRIA, is intentionally composed of firms that have different investment management philosophies.

“With Zero Alpha Group, the group has a very consistent investment process, fiduciary approach and we’re carbon copies of each other, but geographically we are diverse,” Brodeski says. “With aRIA they are also geographically diverse, but none of us have the same investment philosophy. Zero Alpha is more about having a common investment approach and this is a group of people who are all in a business-building mode and looking to do it beyond organic. Frankly, no one else in the Zero Alpha Group has chosen to grow beyond organically.”

Safe place

Brodeski also points out that it would be difficult to have firms with like-minded investment philosophies in the same group because then they’d all be competing to bring in the same types of advisors.

“What was interesting was that each of the firms had targeted different kinds of advisors and all had different type of advisors,” Brodeski says. “It was a safe group even though we’re all very large. It’s a vast ocean.”

Ron Carson: The RIA landscape is undergoing positive change unlike at any other point in our history.

The group met for the first time in Phoenix last month, and the meeting morphed into a formal alliance.

“Everyone just hit it off. There was a high degree of trust, and we just said: Let’s take it to a higher level,” Furey says.

Level of commitment

Furey says he felt there was clearly a need for this type of group in the industry and he sought geographically diverse firms that showed a level of determination to grow. He says many firms aren’t equipped to bring aboard wirehouse breakaways, but they may be well-suited to having a larger, more organized firm pull them up to a higher rung of scale.

Furey says the group is also open to new members. “The group will vett new potential members. We may add one this year,” he says.

He even says the group would consider roll ups. “We wanted to star with RIAs that did not have a financial partner, but I think we would be open to that in the future. We would review a firm like that the same way as any other,” he says. “We are most interested in a firm that can bring knowledge and expertise we don’t already have

Brodeski says he’s not sure how formal the group will become in terms of forming a corporation, and that Furey is investigating those options. Members of the group all put in some money to secure hotels for meeting room space, Brodeski says, adding that a figure of $10,000 is in the “ballpark.”

As for the fee’s significance, Furey says: “It’s a level of commitment.”

Lips zipped

For a group like this to succeed, it’s important that the advisors feel free to share details of their successes and failures. One of the reasons the advisors feel comfortable is that they all agreed to confidentiality clauses saying they would not release information about the peer firms.

“The bottom line is, confidentiality is mission critical. It was valuable,” Brodeski says. “We want to learn from each other’s successes and learn from each other’s mistakes so it will increase the odds of growing firms successfully and mitigates the risk of doing the wrong thing.”

Even though these firms are all large, Brodeski says that he didn’t personally know any of the other advisors, since they all have very different business models. For instance, Carson is very well known in the industry but since he was a former LPL advisor, Brodeski had never met him. Savant keeps its assets under custody with Schwab Advisor Services and TD Ameritrade and goes to their conferences.

Succession help

Clearly, members of this group feel that smaller RIAs don’t have a lot of options for their practices. For instance, Brodeski says RIAs can try internal succession strategies — which can be a challenge. Others have sold to banks, which can be problematic. Some RIAs are considering the aggregators, but Brodeski feels that’s not always the best option for RIAs.

“The main focus is to share information,” he says. “When you look at the succession planning, we think there are RIAs out there who don’t have a good succession plan in place. We think this may be where some of the larger RIA can potentially provide an alternative path for those who don’t want to do an internal succession or sell to a bank and don’t want to go to a roll-up.”

Stephen Winks said:

April 30, 2012 — 8:58 PM UTC

GENESIS OF LARGE SCALE INSTITUTIONALIZED SUPPORT FOR EXPERT ADVICE

The roll up phenomenon is built upon the promise of simply facilitating a wider latitude for advisors to execute. There is no enhancement of technical competency or achievement of advisory services scale which would improve advisory services capability and expand the margins of the advisor as the roll up firm is not capable of achieving either. Essentially, other than the opportunity to excell in ways not possible in a brokerage format, the break away broker is stillo on their own only with less resources but more revenues from which is the burden of each breakaway broker has to reinvent the wheel to the best of their ability, which is limited by their limited exposure and expertise in technical disiplines necessitated by modernity and fiduciary standing.

The extrapolation of the brokerage business model of roll-up firm leaves numerous and significant holes that must be filled to support expert advisory services.

1. Authenticated expert prudent process must be created for each of the ten major market segments served so it is safe for the advisor to acknowledge fiduciary standing. 2. Advanced technology necessary to support transparency and the continuous comprehensive counsel required for fiduciary counsel.3. Work flow management tied to a functional division of labor (Advisor, CAO, CIO) makes advice scalable, easy to execute and manage.4. Conflict of interest management so difficult for the brokerage industry to manage is required so fiduciary standing in the client’s best interest is possible to achieve.5. Expert advisory services support for each of the ten major market segments advisors serve make expert fiduciary standing and the mitigation of fiduciary liability possible.

Brent Broadeski may well be the catalyst for the development of large scale institutionalized support for fiduciary standing so advice is safe scalable, easy to execute and manage. The difference between aRIA and a roll-up is first technical competency that actually supports fiduciary standing and is concerned with technical competency, optimizing margins and the advisors value proposition at the advisor level. Roll-ups divorce themselves technical issues essential for scale and enhancement of the advisor value proposition.

Technical competency is the driving thrust of the CPA profession from which Brent Broadeski comes. He has first hand technical expertise in authenticated prudent process, advanced technology, work flow management, conflict management and expert advisory services support—none of which are developed in any brokerage format anywhere. Brent understands all these technical disiplines. With Ron Carson and others joining in, we might be seeing the critical mass emerging which can do things not possible on Wall Street, affording unprecedented technical capability at a cost lower than a packaged product, at profit margins at the advisor level—not possible for Wall Street to replicate.

Most importantly, the best interest of the investing public, long neglected by the brokerage industry and FINRA, will prevail. In the history of man there has neer been an incident where the best interest of the consumer has not prevailed in a free market.

Brent Broadeski, Ron Carson and others which constitute the free market, may well achieve something that the regulators are having difficulty in executing, restoring the trust and confidence of the investing public.

aRIA is the external catalyst that should cause the brokerage industry to reassess its oposition to the best interest of the investing public and fiduciary standing. Every sucessful person in the business wants to do the right thing in the best interest of the consumer. Once aRIA lets the Genie ot of the bottle—it will be very difficult to put back in.

SCW

Elmer Rich III said:

April 30, 2012 — 5:57 PM UTC

“Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.” We always caution clients with great new ideas to ask — “Why hasn’t this been done already?” No individual or group is smarter than the markets and markets generally contain all current opportunities — already.

We are M&A consultants and deal daily with the difficulties of optimizing the value of an RIA business at a transition.

Maybe there is something new here that hasn’t been tried and not worked — maybe not.

David Selig said:

April 30, 2012 — 4:53 PM UTC

Brilliant move, Furey! Needed by the industry

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